


lightyears

by ecotone



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, awoken social dynamics, immortal space teen gets face tattoos instead of talking about her problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:42:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28575450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecotone/pseuds/ecotone
Summary: On the journey to Earth, there is little to do but reflect.Esila, sick of reflection, has an idea.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	lightyears

It takes two days for Esila to grow achingly bored of space travel. 

She spends the first day staring out of the broad flex-glass windows, watching the distant stars spin past. In the singularity there had been a kind of perfect blackness, void of everything, but then it had exploded into light and color and the suggestion of life, very far away. There are new stars in the sky, ones she couldn't see from the Distributary, and she busies herself making new constellations to distract herself from thinking about home.

She doesn't regret leaving, because regret is a pointless exercise: no amount of fervent longing will let her go home again. So she tries her best to keep her mind on the stars, on the future, steadily ignoring the pile of tasks that has been steadily accumulating for the past six months, the result of her telling herself that she would have plenty of free time on the way to Earth.

Esila spends the second day playing cards with Uldren in the greenhouse room. She is, he tells her, not very good at cheating. 

She’s aboard Mara Sov’s Hull, though in practice this is only an honorary position— the Hulls are all the same size, all cramped. Machinery fills every corner that’s not being used for habitation, and some that are. Esila sleeps surrounded by the soft blue glow of eutech. 

However distinctive, she knows her position is one afforded to her not only for her work, nor her early support of Mara’s plans: she is one of the first children of the Awoken, and her people have always adored her. She is her mother’s darling, the unofficial, collective daughter of the 891. She spent years dozing on Alis Li's lap, being carted around the Shipspire by Sjur and all manner of eutechs. Kelda always told her that her second mother was the Distributary.

Esila has always tried to avoid abusing this position, to deserve everything she receives, to prove herself worthy of the love the Awoken have always given her. In the Distributary, influence is best wielded lightly. 

But, she thinks, even as she is no longer a child, she knows the others still view her as one. It isn't optimal— in fact, she has spent years railing against it— but it is sometimes useful. And as the youngest and most-spoiled Awoken aboard Sov’s Hull, she figures she can get away with creating her own entertainment. 

Besides, she had an idea last night. 

At dinner, she stands up and, as if she was speaking in the council chamber of the 891, announces: “I want my marks.” 

“Huh?” Sjur looks up from her tablet. “You didn’t want them before we left.” 

“I changed my mind,” Esila says, trying not to sound petulant. “Besides, when we get to Earth, no one’s going to have the time to draw them for me. It’d be easiest to just do it now.” 

Sjur narrows her eyes like a cave-bear sensing a trap. Mara glances up from her bowl, eyes flickering between the two of them. “Why’d you change your mind?” 

Esila has always loved the full-moon clearness of her face, the reminder of the stars she was born under. But after two days in deep space, she is fully conscious of the fact that she will never see Sila again. 

She is terrified that one day she will wake up and have forgotten what her mother looked like. 

“I’m a historian,” she says, “it seems appropriate to have some visual reminder of the Distributary.” It’s not a lie— it’s perfectly true, even. It’s just not the biggest truth at play. Still, the obfuscation makes her feel like she's doing something wrong, like she's keeping a secret that shouldn't exist. She pushes the feeling away. _It's a story,_ she thinks. _You're telling a story._

Sjur hums at that, seemingly satisfied. If she can see the tension in Esila's shoulders, she doesn't comment on it. “Whatever, we can do it tonight.” She stands and walks the scant four feet to the front of the shuttle, ruffling Mara’s hair as she passes. “Gonna go make sure we’re not about to get hit by a meteor.” 

Mara looks at Esila, perfectly impassive, even as her hair is sticking up at odd angles. She looks like she can see through Esila's posturing, like every secret she has ever had is being slowly excavated in the dim blue light of the Hull. Esila, irrationally, wonders if she can read minds. 

“Whenever,” Esila says primly, turning back to her bone broth. She does not want Mara Sov to look at her and see a homesick child. “I’m just bored.”

Mara keeps looking at her. In a moment of irreverent agitation, Esila thinks that maybe there can be only one liar aboard this ship.

* * *

Sjur gets Uldren to do it, because of everyone on the Hull he has the steadiest hands. As Sjur explains the process to him— not a reassuring conversation, Esila thinks— she considers her own hands, how steady they are. Her hands and forearms are covered in ink: her skin, already blue, is run through with navy and black, lines of faded red drawn with the pen she'd stolen from Kelda. It's her method of keeping notes, scribbling half-thought lines she doesn't want to forget, ideas she wants to hold onto for later. Her mother had said she was the only Awoken in the Distributary that could be identified from her hands alone. 

After Sjur leaves, Esila draws Uldren a picture, even though he’s perfectly aware of what Sila looked— looks— like. She wants it to be perfect, doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with a false face on top of her own. 

The pattern on Sila’s face is simple: a thin line down her nose, two more under her eyes, two dots above her eyebrows. They had originally been purely practical, a way to mark the 891, to differentiate them from the rest. By the time Queen Nguya took the throne, they had evolved into an art form of their own, family markers and ornate decorations. 

Esila looks at the white lines crossing Uldren’s eyes, the mark on his forehead. She wonders if his mother put it there, or maybe Mara. Mara, whose face is as clear and bright as a new star, who needs no signifier. 

Uldren fiddles with the ink Sjur had scrounged up for them. She’d assured them it was safe, and Esila is trying not to think about how her definition of ‘safe’ is probably very unlike Sjur’s. 

“Why’d you come?” He asks, hands occupied, not looking at her. 

She knows why he’s asking her. Everyone else on board this Hull left because of Mara Sov. Uldren, Sjur, the eutechs, all had given up everything they’ve ever known because Mara asked, or because she expected them to. Esila did not leave for Mara, even as she has been given the honor of leaving with her. 

“I wanted to see where we stand,” she says, “universally speaking,” and Uldren snorts, even though she wasn’t trying to be funny. 

And she does want that, wants to see how Awoken history aligns itself with the world outside the Distributary, wants to know what long chain of secret events led to the creation of their own private universe, wants to trace it backwards through time and space until the whole of their history is laid bare before her. 

This is the truth. But there is another larger, secret truth: she wants to know where she stands in the order of things, away from her mother and her home and almost everyone that has ever known her. Esila grew up in wartime, and she does not know how to handle stability. Leaving was a monumental change, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of change, the kind of event that will never stop having ramifications. 

She wants to see what she can make of it, now, with nothing but the memory of her mother on her face. She wants to be there to write it down.

Uldren picks up a needle they’d stolen from the medical kit. “You ready?” He asks, waving it around a little. The motion reminds her of the time he’d dragged her out fishing with some of his friends, the wiggle of the glow-worms on the hook. He's frowning a little; Esila knows he's worried about hurting her, however light the pain.

This seems, suddenly, like a stupid idea. 

Then again, leaving the Distributary could very well be the biggest mistake of her life. What is this, compared to all the uncertainty ahead? 

“Yeah,” she says, and does not flinch when the needle meets skin.

**Author's Note:**

> happy new year, everyone! hope you're all well, especially given [gestures wildly] current events. 
> 
> realized after writing this that this explanation for in-canon face markings doesn't cover why city-born awoken have them, but hey, it's a fanfic. 
> 
> thank you for reading! <3


End file.
